


this isn't a metaphor for anything...

by blackorchids



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Scott, Animal Shelters, Cats, Deputy Cora Hale, Dogs, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, No Plot/Plotless, Off-Screen Bickering, Pets, Polyamory, Rabbits, Threesome - F/F/F, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-16 23:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7288366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackorchids/pseuds/blackorchids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cora and Lydia can't decide whether they want to get a dog or a cat and Allison's refusal to get in the middle isn't helping anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this isn't a metaphor for anything...

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [FreshBrains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains) in the [femslashrevolution2016](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/femslashrevolution2016) collection. 



> **Prompt:** Buying a pet together
> 
>  **notes:** My fics get less and less plotty as the months pass???

“Your sister wants, like, a Doberman, or a German shepherd,” Allison says to Derek, ostensibly her day to help him with the massive reno-job that the Hale House has become. She’s laying in a patch of shade, though, sharpening her arrows as he attempts to one-man fit the massive picture windows into their frames. Derek laughs, settling the window in and wiping his hands against his jeans before going to hunt for the screw gun from his massive pile of power tools.

“Lydia’s not supportive, I take it?” Derek asks. “She was pretty frustrated at the last pack meeting.”

“Said she was done with canines in all forms and breeds.” Allison confirms, and Derek scoffs, just like he had two weeks ago when Lydia had pushed Scott into the river and dumped an entire bucket of water over Liam’s head. “And she’s also not over Prada getting possessed and trying to eat the Sheriff.”

There’s a silence between them as they relive that particularly strange week.

“So Cora wants a giant dog, Lydia wants a cat, probably—what’re you looking for?”

“Honestly?” Allison asks, grinning a little as she tests the point of the arrow against the tip of her thumb and almost splits the digit open. “I’ve been avoiding mentioning any animals, because they both want me to be the tie-breaker. But when I was younger, I always wanted one of those giant rabbits. We moved too often to have pets, and the only ones I ever encountered were hunting dogs.”

Derek finally locates the screw gun and there’s a few moments where they don’t speak as he gets the window fastened in, three-inch long steel screws for extra support and strength. Allison had stolen one of her father’s M-60s and tested out just how bullet-proof the reinforced bullet-proof glass was, and it’d held up to both her and Derek’s standards. Derek had been intent on rebuilding the house so that it was bigger and safer than ever, but Lydia had pointed out that, since the pack wasn’t actually a family, it would seem odd to the handful of human Beacon Hills residents that weren’t yet in the know that a massive house was filled with a handful of different couples.

“Obviously it doesn’t matter what we get,” Allison says, once he’s finished and come over to sit next to her. She passes her bag of veggie straws over and he takes it, picking through to the red ones, because Stiles had convinced him that they were each a different flavor and no one had bothered to tell him otherwise. “I’m pretty positive that this is happening because Lydia thinks getting a pet is a crucial step between getting together and having a child.”

“That’s going to be a tricky play,” Derek comments. “Do you all want to carry?”

“I assume we’ll either pick from a hat, unless someone gets it in her head that we should all get inseminated and just see who takes.”

Derek stares at her. “There’s no way it’ll happen that you don’t all take.”

“So you better cross your fingers that we go with the hat route,” Allison says mildly, glancing at her phone and snorting at the twenty-seven missed texts she’s gotten from her girlfriends. There’s one there, at the bottom, from Scott, requesting that she come and remove Cora and Lydia from Deaton’s office, because their arguing is scaring the customers.

“You wanna help with this?” Allison asks, tilting her phone so Derek can see the screen. 

“I’m very busy,” he tells her, even though she’d just watched him finish putting up the last window. From his expression, it’s clear he knows she’s aware he’s not.

“Isn’t it nice not being the alpha, anymore?” Allison says, somewhat meanly, as she snatches her bag of veggie straws away from him on her way up, stuffing her arrowheads in her canvas tote.

“All of you teenaged brats no longer my responsibility?” Derek shoots back. “It’s a dream come true.”

*

Liam looks pretty haunted when she gets to the vet’s office and asks him where Cora and Lydia have disappeared to. The pack had worried, in the beginning, with how often the two of them got into spats, that Lydia might provoke Cora too far one day and get seriously injured, but Allison has been witness to some of their worst arguments, whenever one of them had jumped on the other one, it’d remained all human, through the screaming and the scratching, until they’d worked themselves past that and started removing each other’s clothing, which is usually when Allison bothered to join them.

Allison pats their youngest member on the head, lets him nuzzle into the palm of her hand for a minute before waving to Scott through the window and getting back into her car. They live close to the police department, because Cora had literally thrown darts at career options and landed on deputy. Stiles’ dad adores her, to a level that surpasses his fondness of all of the pack’s girls, and she not only got promoted to senior deputy in record speed, but took care of all the supernatural cases on the down-low.

Lydia had once ruined someone’s credit score and put them on the international no-fly list for implying Cora was doing an inferior job.

She ends up being pulled over at the intersection closest to their street, and Jordan leans into the window, looking unapologetic. “Can you please tell your girlfriend that getting into an argument about what species of pet you’re going to buy is not a good enough reason to miss a day of work?”

Allison grins sharply at him, still somewhat uneasy about how interested in Lydia he’d been back when the three of them were minors and he was an actual, bona-fide adult. “It’s what comes after the arguing that she missed work for,” she says sweetly, pulling away from him barely before he’s finished pulling his head out from her window.

Cora’s going down on Lydia in the kitchen when Allison gets home, and Lydia flip-flops back and forth from panting her name and barking out that _this changes nothing, Cor, we’re not getting a damn mutt_ , and Allison just really loves them, okay?

*

After, when the three of them have come down from post-orgasm bliss and are cuddling, naked, on the sectional, Allison suggests driving down to Fresno and looking at their animal shelters for a better selection.

“We still haven’t decided, Ally,” Lydia says sleepily, dragging the heels of her palms up and down Cora’s spine and nape like their resident werewolf likes.

“We can decide when we get there,” Allison says. “If they don’t have one, they’ll have the other.” She definitely didn’t call ahead and ask if they had any giant rabbits.

Cora snuffles against Allison’s belly, scooting up a bit so she can press a kiss in the valley between her breasts before tucking her face in the crook of Allison’s neck, sniffing around like the weirdo she is. “Want a puppy,” Cora mumbles. And then she passes out.

*

Lydia sits in the center of the cat room and glares at all of them equally, trying to determine from some sort of sixth sense which one is superior to all of the others. Allison’s at the door, and Cora’s waiting outside, because it’s easier to have one cat get used to the werewolf than have her step foot inside the room and give them all heart attacks. A scrawny three-legged orange tabby makes its way to Lydia first, climbing directly into her lap and yowling until she starts scratching at it under the chin. The cat hisses whenever any other cats come near Lydia after that, and Allison rolls her eyes, already knows that Lydia’s going to be buying the asshole cat.

On the plus side, Vera takes almost no time to get used to Cora, and Lydia preens all the way to the dog kennels, rolling her eyes at the teenaged volunteer who tries to insist on putting the cat in a cardboard crate while they continue browsing.

It’s a little more of a process, finding a dog, because they aren’t all in one communal area, and Cora wants to adopt them all.

“That’s stupid,” Lydia’s saying to her, Vera curled up in her arms and purring. “You can’t adopt the losers.”

“There’s no such thing as a loser dog, Lyds,” Cora sniffs, the same condescending voice Lydia uses on politicians and trust fund brats. “All dogs are winners.”

Lydia looks genuinely horrified at that, and Allison goes from being fifty percent sure that this is a marker on their journey to parenthood to being a hundred and ten percent sure. “That’s like assuming all children are equals in every way!” she hisses, and Cora blinks, understanding washing over her face.

“Obviously our children are going to be better than everyone elses’ children,” Allison says, before Cora can put her foot in it. She’s not yet seen the giant rabbit she had the shelter put on hold, but she figures he’ll be able to wait for her a little longer. “But I’m a pretty big believer in nurture, over nature, Lyds.”

Lydia appears to consider this—whether her children will take over the world because of their genes or because of their grooming.

“Not that dog,” a voice says from the next row. “Eric, that dog’s too old. Everyone knows the old dogs are the ones with the most defects.”

Lydia dumps Vera in Allison’s arms and goes to rip apart some kid’s mom, but Cora hugs her tight to her chest, werewolf strength allowing her to look completely at ease. Defects, Cora mouths to Allison, and Allison’s pretty offended herself, even though she knows her grandfather used to drown the smallest of each liter of hunting hounds.

Cora sends Lydia to go find someone to let them adopt the old dog, and she disappears in a whirl of red hair and impossibly high heels that still don’t manage to bring her up to Allison’s height. When the aged dog notices them stopping in front of his cage, Cora stooping down to fit her hands between the bars, he starts wiggling around happily, clamoring to his feet and wagging his tail wildly.

“That’s right, boy,” Cora mumbles, the hard lines of her face smoothing out as she coos to the thing. “Old Samuel, is that right?” she asks, reading the tag. “Says you’re good with cats too—obviously you’re perfect for our little family.” Old Samuel yips, and Cora glances both ways before yipping back, quietly, causing the dog to go absolutely haywire in excitement.

“We’ll call you Sammy, of course,” Cora tells the dog, not looking up when Lydia’s pointy heels start clicking her way down to them, that same teenager following her, babbling about how Old Samuel really wasn’t, perhaps, the best fit for them, emphasizing how lifeless he was a few times before stopping short when he notices how much Samuel’s bouncing around in his cramped kennel.

*

Cora sits in the back, Sam on his back and trying to fit as much of himself into her lap as possible. Allison’s sitting passenger, Bernard the rabbit and Vera warring for space in her lap.

“Too bad we didn’t get a _well-bred_ dog, Lyds,” Cora says, in that instigator voice that tells everyone she’s a little sibling.

“As though I would have allowed you to adopt a bad dog,” Lydia sniffs. “Samuel was clearly the best of the lot of them.”

" _Allowed_ me?" Cora shrills. They start sniping at each other, and Allison thumbs out a text to Derek.

 **Allison:** [Saturday, 2:57pm] _Pulling names from a hat is gonna be a no-go, D_

He replies as Lydia pulls onto the freeway, her voice toeing the line between regular shrill and banshee-painful as she illustrates to Cora exactly how Samuel was clearly the superior canine at the pound, and clearly the superior canine in the car, eyes fixed on the road and not noticing Cora’s bright grin in the back.

 **Ex Alpha:** [Saturday, 3:02pm] _Lord help us all._

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me or prompt me on tumblr [@rosalinesbenvolio](http://www.rosalinesbenvolio.tumblr.com)!


End file.
